complementary and alternative medicine
oracknows | June 17, 2011The other day, I expressed my displeasure at an article published in The Atlantic that, boiled down to its essence, was one long apologia for unscientific "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and "integrative medicine" (IM). Yes, I was quite critical, but, I believe, not unfairly so. Not surprisingly, however, the author of the article, David H. Freedman, was quite displeased, so much so that he actually showed up in my comments to take me to task. He didn't just take me to task, though. He took all of you to task, as well, at least those of you who piled on. Unfortunately, his…
oracknows | June 16, 2011Well, well, well, well, well.
Look who's coming to blight my hometown, and look who's doing it hot on the heels of my having directed some not-so-Respectful Insolence at him. Yes, it's Deepak Chopra himself showing up on Saturday to bring his woo to one of the places that least needs it, downtown Detroit:
Excitement and diversity is coming to the Metropolitan Detroit community this Summer! Chene Park Amphitheater is bringing an entirely new experience to the City on Saturday, June 18th, 2011: The "Music & Mastery Holistic Festival".
The "Music & Mastery Holistic Festival" is a full-…
oracknows | June 15, 2011Remember the case of the Winkler County nurses?
This is the story of two nurses who blew the whistle on a bad doctor, a quack even, in my opinion. As a result they faced the very real possibility of jail time. And not just jail time, but serious jail time, up to ten years. I first wrote about this story nearly two years ago, when I first learned of Dr. Rolando Arafiles, his good buddy (and business partner hawking supplements with him) Winkler County Sheriff Robert Roberts, and the administration of a small hospital in the middle of nowhere in west Texas.
Readers might recall that Dr.…
oracknows | June 15, 2011Note added 6/16/2011: The author of the target--I mean subject--of this piece of insolence has responded in the comments.
Note added 6/17/2011: Steve Novella has also commented. He is unusually harsh (for him).
What is it with The Atlantic lately? It used to be one of my favorite magazines. In fact, I was a subscriber for something like 20 or 25 years. Then, back in 2009 at the height of the H1N1 frenzy, The Atlantic published what can only be described as an execrable bit of journalism lionizing the brave maverick doctor Tom Jefferson and arguing, in essence, that vaccinating against H1N1…
oracknows | June 12, 2011Here's an excellent video from Down Under on the human costs of the anti-vaccine movement:
It features Viera Scheibner, who has nothing good to say about vaccines and thinks that vaccines are dangerous and infectious diseases in childhood are good.
Simply incredible.
oracknows | June 10, 2011It's been another rather rough week. Grant season is in full swing, and I'm busily writing away. As I get to the end of the week, I wondered: Should I be serious or should I post a bit of fluff? Given the crappy mood I've been in on and off (grants added to my usual responsibilities tend to do that to me), I know what I need, and I need it fast. I need it now. I need it bad. I need...some woo. And nothing but the best will do. But what? Over the years I've done Your Friday Dose of Woo, I thought I had seen it all. Well, not exactly all. Rather, it thought I had seen most of it, but…
oracknows | June 7, 2011More than a week has passed, and I thought that this cup had passed from me, and I was glad. After all, if I analyzed every crap study done by anti-vaccine zealots to try to demonstrate that vaccines cause autism, I would have time for little else in terms of other kinds of that Insolence you all know and love. This particular study was released in late May and, at the time, I wasn't really in the mood to take it on; so I ignored it. But then wouldn't you know that the Autism Action Network would have to go and send out a press release yesterday entitled New Study Links Vaccines and Autism:…
oracknows | June 6, 2011I've frequently been critical fo the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) for funding dubious studies of pseudoscience and, in essence, promoting unscientific quackademic medicine (is there any other kind?) by giving it the patina of seeming respectability. I can't recall how many times I've seen promoters of woo justify their woo by saying, "Well, NCCAM funds it." As far as apologetics for quackademic medicine, "NCCAM does it" is right up there with "Harvard does it." Unfortunately, Harvard really does do it, as do too many other bastions of science-based…
oracknows | June 5, 2011How many times have I read or heard from believers in "alternative" medicine that some disease or other is caused by "toxins"? I honestly can't remember, but in alt-world, no matter what the disease or condition under discussion is, there's a good chance that sooner or later it will be linked to "toxins." It doesn't matter if it's cancer, autism, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, or that general malaise that comes over people who, as British comedians Mitchell and Webb put it, have more money than sense; somehow, some way, someone will invoke "toxins."
I was reminded of this obsession…
oracknows | June 2, 2011Orac note: This is an updated post that appeared a few months ago. Events occurred that led me to think it would be a good idea simply to expand and update it.
It's been a recurring theme on this blog to discuss and dissect the infiltration of quackademic medicine into our medical schools. Whether it be called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine" (IM), its infiltration into various academic medical centers has been one of the more alarming developments I've noted over the last several years. The reason is that "integrative" medicine is all too often in…
oracknows | May 30, 2011Why is it that so many bloggable items tend to pop up right before holidays? Whatever the reason, whether my perception that this is the case is accurate or simply the result of confirmation bias on my part, last Friday a little tidbit of popped up that seriously tempted me to blog about it. But I was good (mostly). I resisted, figuring that, first, readership plummets during holiday weekends anyway and, second, anything worth giving an Orac-style dissection to will still be worth giving an Orac-style dissection to three days later. If it isn't, then it probably wasn't worth the full Orac…
oracknows | May 25, 2011Many are the times I've referred to homeopathy as The One Quackery To Rule Them All. Because homeopathic remedies diluted greater than 12 C (12 serial hundred-fold dilutions) have been diluted more than Avagadro's number, they are incredibly unlikely to have even a single molecule of starting compound in them. That makes them water. Given that the vast majority of homeopathic remedies are, in fact, only water, they are the perfect quackery, and any effects due to homeopathy are nonspecific and placebo effects. More recently, I've pointed out that, because you can't have naturopathy without…
oracknows | May 25, 2011It's that time of year again!
No, I'm not referring to the unofficial start of summer here in the U.S., namely the Memorial Day holiday, although that is fast approaching. In fact, it's only five days away. No, I'm referring to something that, beginning today, will blight my favorite metro area (Chicago) for the next few days. I'm referring to the anti-vaccine quackfest that starts this morning in Lombard, IL and is known as Autism One. As long as I can remember blogging (OK, maybe for the last four or five years), as Memorial Day rolls around, I can't help but get that sinking feeling as the…
oracknows | May 23, 2011Let's face it, Dr. Andrew Weil is a rock star in the "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and "integrative medicine" (IM) movement. He is one of its founders, at least a founder of the its most modern iteration, and I am hard-pressed to think of anyone who did more in the early days of the CAM/IM movement, back before it ever managed to achieve a modicum of unearned respectability, to popularize CAM. In fact, no physician that I can think of has over the course of his lifetime done more to promote the rise of quackademic medicine than Dr. Weil. The only forces greater than Dr. Weil…
oracknows | May 22, 2011I get it. Seriously, I really do. Advertising is a deal with the devil. I understand that and have come to accept it--to a point. For example, I can (sort of) tolerate ads for Cancer Treatment Centers of America showing up on ScienceBlogs; I even understand that outside of those of us who promote science-based medicine CTCA isn't considered to be that bad. However, ads for homeopathy really, really irritated me, as I mentioned on Friday. It gets even worse than that, though. As if ads for homeopathy and human growth hormone anti-aging quackery weren't enough, what popped up earlier to mock…
oracknows | May 20, 2011Apparently something's going on here on ScienceBlogs. It's something that I don't like at all. You, my readers, have been informing me of it. Oddly enough, it also jibes with potential blogging material that appeared on that wretched hive of scum and quackery, The Huffington Post. You'll see what I'm talking about in a moment. Suffice it to say that it is not a confluence that makes me happy. It's not even a confluence that amuses me. Rather, it's a confluence that should never, ever happen. But happen it has.
It began with advertisements that have been popping up. Unfortunately, after a long…
oracknows | May 19, 2011Well, well, well, well.
Remember how recently autism quack Dr. Mark Geier finally ran afoul of Maryland's medical board for subjecting autistic children to unethical and potentially dangerous treatments with Lupron? Briefly, his license was suspended on an emergency basis, and, as a result, a lot of attention was brought to bear not just on the father, but on his son David Geier as well, who had been working with his father for years and, to all appearances, practicing medicine without a license. Personally, ever since I first learned of Mark and David Geier's dubious medicine six years ago,…
oracknows | May 18, 2011One of the stranger Internet-based quackery phenomena of the last decade is Morgellon's disease. This is a topic I haven't visited that much on this blog, its having last come up in a big way a little more than a year ago, when I discussed it in the context of Dr. Rolando Arafiles and the other quackery he was promoting. This led to extreme unhappiness on the part of self-proclaimed Morgellons disease "expert" Marc Neumann, who later bombarded me with threatening e-mail rants. In any case, whatever Morgellons disease is, its cause is almost certainly not what patients think it is, namely the…
oracknows | May 17, 2011Remember Robert O. Young?
He's the purveyor of only the finest quackery. Note that, by "finest," I mean the most highly entertaining, the sort of utter twaddle that makes me laugh out loud when I read it. Whether it's his claim that alkalinization is the cure for basically all disease, his characterizing sepsis as not being due to bacterial infection, his description of cancer as a mechanism to protect the body from "rotten cells" spoiled by acid and liquified, or his nonsensical attacks on Andrew Weil (his being one of the only men who can make Weil look reasonable by comparison), Robrt O.…
oracknows | May 13, 2011I and others have often written about how "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and "integrative medicine" (IM) represent a "bait and switch." The basic concept is that CAM/IM has co-opted several ostensibly science-based modalities, such as diet, exercise, relaxation, and the like. These are used as the bait by representing them as being somehow "alternative" and outside of the mainstream of medicine. The switch occurs when CAM/IM advocates use the known efficacy of modalities like this to argue that other woo works. They do this through a "big tent" policy, where diet, exercise,…